Jun 11, 2024
Today I talk with Dr. Bruce Chalmer, a coupletherapist and author of a newly published book about betrayal andforgiveness - a book I highly recommend for anyone struggling withforgiveness. Carrying around anger and/or resentment toward someoneis a heavy burden to bear that can sap your energy, detract fromyour relationships, and steal your joy for life. But how can youforgive someone who has betrayed you? Is forgiveness alwayspossible? Listen in to learn more!
Dr. Bruce Chalmer is a psychologist in Vermont who hasbeen working with couples for over thirty years. Through histeaching, consulting, writing, podcast, and videos aboutrelationships, his ideas have helped thousands of couples and theirtherapists.
Dr. Chalmer is the author of "It's Not AboutCommunication! Why Everything You Know About Couples Therapy isWrong", published in 2022, and "Reigniting the Spark: Why StableRelationships Lose Intimacy, and How to Get It Back", published in2020. His latest book is “Betrayal and Forgiveness: How to Navigatethe Turmoil and Learn to Trust Again.” With his wife, educator JudyAlexander, Dr. Chalmer co-hosts the "Couples Therapy in SevenWords" podcast, available at https://ctin7.com.
Books Bruce mentions in today’s episode:
Whole BrainLiving, by Jill Bolte Taylor
TheRighteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt
Learn more about Bruce:
Book: Betrayal andForgiveness
Website: https://brucechalmer.com/
Podcast: https://couplestherapyinsevenwords.com/
Learn more about Karin:
Website: https://www.drcalde.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theloveandconnectioncoach/
TRANSCRIPT
Intro:
Karin: This is Love Is Us,Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, KarinCalde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen ourrelationships, explore who we are in those relationships, andexperience a greater sense of love and connection with those aroundus, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology,practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my ownhealing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helpingindividuals and couples with their relationships and personalgrowth. If you want to experience more love in your life andcontribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our worldtoday, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love Is Us.
Episode:
Karin: Welcome all mylisteners. Thank you for being here. Today we are going to betalking about forgiveness. Oof. This can be a really tough topicfor a lot of people, no exception to this. But when we hold on toanger and resentment, to that hurt after we've been betrayed, itaffects the other areas of our lives and it impacts ourrelationships, especially when it makes it so that it's hard totrust again, because trust is a fundamental part of ourrelationships, of healthy relationships, anyway. So I'm reallyhappy to have Bruce Chalmer back. I had him on about a year ago,and he has got so much experience working with couples, and I lovelearning from him. I read his recent book that he just published.It's called betrayal and how to navigate the turmoil and learn totrust again. And I can say with 100% integrity that this really isa book, and I highly recommend that you read it if you are goingthrough something like this. So I'm excited to have him on. This isa really rich conversation with great information. And again, I'mglad you're here. Here we go. Bruce, welcome back.
[02:18] Bruce: I'm delightedto be back. Thanks for having me on your program.
[02:21] Karin: Yeah, it'sreally great to have you back. Of course, you were on my show, Idon't know, around a year ago or so, and you were talking aboutcommunication and couples. And then you had contacted me a fewmonths ago about this new book that you have out, betrayal and howto navigate the turmoil and learn to trust again.
[02:43] Bruce: Yes,indeed.
[02:44] Karin: And you wouldask me to read it, and I eagerly said yes and really enjoyed it. Ithought it was just very clear, easy to understand and digest, andI really appreciated it.
[02:56] Bruce: Well, thankyou. I appreciate that. And I appreciate the really nice blurb thatyou wrote that appears in the book, actually on the praise pages inthe beginning. You're in there. So thank you for that.
[03:06] Karin: I'mfamous.
[03:08] Bruce: You are.Absolutely. And actually, as of the time, we happen to be recordingthis on the day after it is the official release. So now it's outthere now. So you're getting more and more famous, at least I hopeso.
[03:22] Karin: Excellent. Sowe're talking about forgiveness today. And there was a time when Iworked in research down at Stanford, and I worked in doctor DavidSpiegel's laboratory. And so that name is probably not familiar tomost people, but he's pretty well known in his field. He does a lotwith hypnosis and altered states of consciousness in terms ofdissociation. But also, he did this really famous study about howsocial support can extend your life, especially with a diagnosis ofmetastatic breast cancer. So that's what we were studying. Butanyway, he would have these really big people come in, like, I gotto meet Bessel van der Kolk and stuff like that. But one of thepeople he had come in worked just locally at Stanford, and I thinkhe was kind of new at this time, and his name was Fred Luskin, andhe came to talk to us about forgiveness. And I remember DavidSpiegel going, well, that's. And I hope that my memory is right. Ihope I'm saying this accurately, but he kind of had enough of it.He was like, you know, I've worked with all these women who havehad these terrible things done to them, and I am certainly notgoing to ask them to forgive. And I think that influenced me at thetime. I was pretty young, but also, I don't think that I quite gotit. And I was left with the question for a long time afterwards,like, what really is forgiveness and what is it not? And so maybewe can start there. Maybe you can talk to us about what it is andwhat it's not.
[05:18] Bruce: Yeah. Inwriting a book, betrayal and forgiveness, clearly, I am more thanimplying, I'm saying very explicitly, forgiveness is a reallyimportant part of healing from betrayal. But, of course, what wemean by forgiveness, it really depends on how you're using thatterm. And I wrote a fair amount in the book about what, at leastthe way I use the word what forgiveness is not. And I think thereare. I suppose I could boil it down. There's two different ways ofunderstanding the word forgiveness, and I go with one of them. Andlet me. Let me give you the one that I don't go with. A lot oftimes when someone says, okay, I forgive someone who hurt me, whatit means is they've restored their relationship with them. So ifsomebody has been, oh, even let's say the case of a married coupleand somebody is sexually unfaithful, and the person who was theoffended party says, well, I forgave them. Meaning when they sayit, they're saying, okay, I restored my relationship with them. Wegot past it. We're going to continue on with our marriage, orwhatever it was. That's one way of understanding what forgiving is.I use the word forgiving in a different way, certainly not thatrarer way either. But the way I use the word forgiving is it hasalmost nothing to do with the person you're forgiving. It's onlyabout yourself. It's an inside job, which is to say, forgiveness iswhen you give up the preoccupation with the anger, the shock, thetrauma stuff, when you've healed from the trauma enough so that youcan think about it and be reminded of it and not go into a panic.That's what I mean by forgive. You've let go of that shockreaction. And that doesn't mean that you're going to restore therelationship with someone who betrayed you. You may, but what itmeans is you can think clearly about it. And that's why I say,well, forgiveness is a necessary part of healing, because you're,before you've forgiven, you're feeling this inner sense of pain.One of the people I quote, and many people when they talk aboutforgiveness, will quote Ann Lamotte, the novelist, and I think shewrites essays as well. And one of her famous quotes, is somethingto the effect that to not forgive someone is like drinking ratpoison and waiting for the rat to die. And as I point out, yeah,what you need to do is get the poison out of you, and then you canworry about dealing with a rat. And from that perspective, you canforgive. The way I'm defining forgiveness, it's possible, at leastin theory, to forgive anything, no matter how heinous it is, nomatter whether or not the person who hurts you has any remorse ordeserves any kind of forgiveness in the former sense. Soforgiveness is something you can do for yourself to get past thepanic phase, and then you can think about moving on. It's verydifferent from trust. You can forgive someone you don't trust. Youcan forgive someone that you would still take to court. You canforgive someone that you would still divorce. I even say, you canforgive someone you would go to war against, even though it's atragedy to have to go to war. But you might feel like, well, thisis the only way that we can defeat some sort of horrible thingthat's happening. But you don't have to. You don't have to be inshock over whatever it is that your enemy did to you. You can workwith them. That's how people are able to make peace after wars.They're able to have a sense that, okay, I don't have to be angryanymore. I can have a sense of mutual understanding.
[08:45] Karin: And I lovethat. It's really about the person who had been betrayed. It'sreally about, primarily about their healing so that they can moveon.
[08:54] Bruce: Yeah. Yeah,exactly. And of course, usually if it's something, someone who hasan ongoing relationship with someone, they're in a marriage or acouple hood or they're in a member of the family or something likethat, usually the person who did the betraying wants to be forgivenif they've acknowledged that they've hurt someone. But that doesn'tdetermine whether the person who was hurt is ready to forgive them.And that's something only the really, only they can determine. Andlots of people will urge someone because of the very things I wastalking about. It hurts. Before you've forgiven someone, you'recarrying around a real painful burden. And forgiveness, you give upthat burden. So anybody who loves that person is going to want themto forgive if they can, but that doesn't mean that they're ready todo so. Sometimes we are not ready to forgive. Sometimes we need theanger.
[09:48] Karin: Yeah. Andsometimes it takes a lot of time to get there.
[09:51] Bruce:Absolutely.
[09:52] Karin: Yeah.
[09:53] Bruce: Yeah. Andappropriately, you know, it does for good reason. We have the angerfor good reason, and it takes a while to get over it for goodreason, because it's, you know, it's part of our brains trying toprotect us.
[10:06] Karin: And I wouldthink then that would also mean that the size of the hurt orperhaps the closeness of the person who betrayed you mightdetermine how long it actually takes.
[10:23] Bruce: If it wassomeone, you would think that, wouldn't you? And I say that by wayof saying I'm often surprised in both directions. It's funny, justearlier today, I was meeting with a couple where, and I think itwas my third session with them, so I've known them. I dont thinkweve been meeting weekly, but ive known them for maybe a month orso. And its amazing to me how far they had come in such a shorttime from some really painful stuff. And conversely, ive met folkswho seem to be harboring really painful grudges from an offhandcomment 25 years ago. So it is often surprising to me the nature ofthe betrayal or, or the closeness of the person, it isn't perfectlycorrelated with how long it seems to take.
[11:12] Karin: That's superinteresting to me.
[11:14] Bruce: Yeah.
[11:15] Karin: And it alsomakes me wonder if it has something to do with past betrayals thatsomehow triggers and brings up for people that that could be. Iwonder why, if that's sometimes why it can be harder in somecirc*mstances.
[11:29] Bruce: That's a greatpoint. You know, I don't know. It's an interesting possibility. Idon't know that anybody's done specific research on that. You know,everybody's been hurt one time or another in their life to onedegree or another. If you've lived long enough, you've probablybeen badly hurt by someone you love again, one way or another, notalways the same ways. And so we all have something of a past,probably. If you're over the age of 20, you've had some past ofbeing, having your heart at least bent, if not broken, to use asilly metaphor, that phenomenon that it's based on past betrayalswouldn't be surprising. I wonder, actually, in terms of what you'resaying, I wonder if some of this is like generational. Generationaltrauma can play a role in this kind of thing as well. It's not justwhat happened to you as an individual, but the things that yourculture is carrying as well can also play a part.
[12:23] Karin: Yeah. Yeah, Iwould believe that, too. And how is it empowering to forgivesomebody?
[12:31] Bruce: Well, I'llanswer that a bit and expand on it. That it is indeed empowering toforgive somebody in the sense that it relieves you of that burden.In the Anne Lamott sense, it's like using her metaphor. It gets thepoison out of you so that you're no longer walking around with thesense that anytime you're reminded of whatever happened, you freakout or descend into panic. So it certainly is empowering in thatsense. The reason that I like to define forgiveness as an insidejob is precisely that. It's because that's empowering. To defineforgiveness as dependent on what someone else does or doesn't do isdisempowering. So when somebody says, I can never forgive thisperson who did this terrible thing for me, and they are, anytimethey think about it, there's this clutch in their stomach and theycan't be in the same space with them. And it's like it rendersparts of the world unholy ground where they can't foot because thatperson is there. And that's disempowering. It seems to me it's muchmore empowering if you're able to say, boy, that really sucked, butI can get past it. And here we are. And there's somebody else Iquote in the book is Carl Pillimer, who is a sociologist at Cornellwho wrote a book a few years ago called Fault Lines, where hetalked about family estrangement. And what he found was, it wasvery relevant to the stuff I was writing about. He found that, Ithink it was, it was interesting research. I think he was able toestimate about 25% of Americans currently are going through somesort of major estrangement from a close family member. And he's nottalking about divorce. He's talking about other kinds ofestrangements and that. And it's always painful. Thats onegeneralization he could make its way. Everybody expressed painabout it. And he found that the people who at least tried toreconcile, which was just a subset of them, but he found a subsetthat tried to reconcile. And everybody who tried to reconcile wasglad they had tried. And not all of them succeeded. Some of themrealized, okay, this just isnt going to work, and they kind of hadto give up on it. But the ones who succeeded often, and I foundthis fascinating, the way they succeeded was they gave up on whatthey thought they needed. They thought for a long time,estrangements. People think, I need the other person to admit whatthey did. I need them to apologize. I need them to acknowledge thepain that they caused. I need them to understand where I was comingfrom. The folks who were able to reconcile often gave up on thatbeforehand. They just said, you know what? It's been in some caseslike 25 years in some of his examples, it's been a long time or ashort time, whatever. Let's just see where we're at now. And oftenwhen they would do that and reestablish contact and the walls wouldcome down amazingly, then the apology would happen in one directionor both directions. Somebody would say, I've been meaning to say,I'm really sorry about that, what happened all those years ago. Ireally feel bad about how I reacted. And the other person, who'sapt to say, you know, I am too, I think we both kind of lost ourcool, and there they are, and it's fine. So I find stories likethat inspiring. Stories like that are why I would write a book onbetrayal and forgiveness.
[15:57] Karin: Yeah, indeed.So you say in your book that you can't go back to how things were.So I love this concept of being able to accept what has happened,has it happened. But also not wanting things to be different. Canyou talk to us about that?
[16:17] Bruce: Yeah. Yeah.You know, the scenario that pops in my head when you ask about thatis the one where there's been infidelity, where there's been anaffair. I see it a lot in my practice. And so, you know, a couplecomes in and in the first session very often, I did a kind of seatof the pants guests a few years ago. I think it's like 30 or 40% ofthe couples I work with in the first session are saying, yeah, whatthey're there for is because there was infidelity. So a lot ofpeople dealing with that. And some folks will come in and usuallyby the time they get to my office, the person who cheated hasadmitted to it. Usually that's the case by then. And theyre verysorry. Theyre really upset, theyre sorry, theyre full of guilt,theyre wanting to be forgiven. All totally understandable. Theperson who was the one who was cheated on is usually feeling reallyhurt, angry, confused, shocked, all of the above. And sometimeswhat they will say is especially the person who did the cheatingwill say, I just want to go back to how things were before. We hada good relationship before. Lets go back to that. And sometimes thepartner will agree and sometimes they won't. But what I do pointout, as you're asking about, you can't do that because that was thesituation that led you into the problem. And in order to do that,you'd have to somehow manage to forget all the pain you just wentthrough. And you can't really do that. I mean, human beings aren'tgoing to do that for good reason. That's another evolutionaryprotection we remember when we, so if the couple is going tosurvive as a couple and want to stay together, they're going tohave to learn to not to forget about it or go back to how it was,but learn from it, to integrate it. You're going to say, wow. Andthis is something I have heard numbers of couples say after aconsiderable amount of work, they'll say something like, wow, thatwas really painful, but I'm so glad we went through that becauselook how much better off we are now. So. And, you know, sometimesthey'll say that together. Occasionally they'll say thatseparately. They'll say, well, we, you know, it looks like we, wewere heading for a breakup and this is really what precipitated it.So grateful it happened and here we are and we can take care of thekids if we're okay with each other. Again, we can take care of thekids. Or again, sometimes they'll say, well, we're so glad we canstay together and our love for each other is so much cheaperbecause we've been through this.
[18:47] Karin: Together andit will be different.
[18:50] Bruce: And it will bedifferent. Yeah. Yeah. That's, you know, Esther Perel points thatone out. Lots of folks who've written about recovery from affairs.I think Janice Spring points it out. I have an endorsem*nt from heron the front cover of my book and she's a bestselling author, soI'm psyched about that.
[19:07] Karin: Nice.
[19:08] Bruce: Yeah. But lotsof folks will point that out. You're going to have a newrelationship, not entirely new. You're still the same people, butyou're going to have a relationship that has been, you could say,transformed or enriched by going through a crisis together andcoming out the other side and having such a better understanding ofeach other and of yourself or having gone through it.
[19:34] Karin: Great. And thepiece, I think that really stood out to me the most in the book wasthe piece on self forgiveness.
[19:44] Bruce: Yeah. Yeah. Italk, as you saw in the book, I talk about how do you go aboutforgiving when you are ready to forgive? How do you do it? And Ihave a oversimple, no doubt, over simple way of describing it inthree steps. The first step is indeed forgive yourself becausepretty much, maybe I'm over generalizing, but pretty much anytimewe get hurt, we tend to blame ourselves, at least in part. Andthat's true even if there's no rational way in which we could beblamed. I know of adults who had been sexually molested as kids ata very young age, like three years old or something, and as adults,they'll still say, I feel bad, I should have stopped. I mean,really, any adult knows, if you've ever seen a three year old, comeon, it was an adult doing the molesting. You couldn't possibly stopit. You could possibly understood to stop it. And yet there'llstill be this part of us that blames ourselves. And there's a goodreason for that. Even though it's painful, even though it's unfair,there's a good reason for it because it gives you some illusion atleast of control. Well, if this is because I'm bad, then maybe ifI'm not so bad, I won't get hurt so much. And so that tends to betrue pretty much universally when we get hurt. The first step, weneed to forgive ourselves so that we're not beating ourselves upover what happened. And usually I think that tends to be thehardest part. And what I say is, when you can do that, when you canaccept. What do I mean by forgive yourself? It's basically saying,you know what, I did the best I could under the circ*mstances. Andthat last part is important. Under the circ*mstances. Well, whatwere the circ*mstances? Well, I knew what I knew, and I didn't knowwhat I didn't know, and I had the understandings I had, and I, youknow, I didn't. I didn't know about stuff I now know about. So if Ihad known those things, I would have done things differently, but Idid. And, you know, I. Who knows what else was going on. Aconfluence of circ*mstances, when you can recognize that, okay,well, given what was happening, I guess that's the best I couldcome up with. I just have to accept that as the human condition.That's what it feels like to forgive yourself. Then you don't haveto be overwhelmed with self flame. And then I think it's arelatively short step to forgive whoever hurts you, even thoughit's like, okay, come on, there's clearly blame there. There'sclearly moral. You know, there's. I don't. I don't dismiss moralityas unimportant. It's very important. And yet I can accord the sameunderstanding to whoever hurt me. I could say, well, I was doingthe best I could under the circ*mstances. I suppose you were, too.I sure wish you had thought differently. I wish you had beenoriented differently in terms of whatever biases and prejudices andbad thoughts you had running around. But that's what you had goingon, and so you did what you did. And it doesn't mean I can trustyou, but I don't have to be angry at you. I can say, well, I guessthat was the best you could do at that point. So that's what letsyou forgive someone else again. It starts with forgiving yourself.If you can appreciate that idea that you're doing the best youcould under the circ*mstances, it's very hard to extend that.
[23:23] Karin: Yeah. And Ithink that it might not be obvious to everyone right away. Itreally might take some digging and some soul searching to reallyrecognize that there's a bit of self blame. It might be. How couldI have let that happen?
[23:41] Bruce: Yeah, exactly.Yeah, there's always something like that going on. And I've talkedwith so many folks where some horrible thing happens years ago witha woman whose husband committed suicide before I met her, and shewas blaming herself horribly, even though there was no. It was oneof those very strange circ*mstances. There was no sign, no sign atall that he was likely to do that. He just was saying, I'm goingout to the store, you know, the kind of classic, and went out tothe store, never came back. Well, instead of running away, he endedup killing. But she had no clue that this was even possible. Andyet she kept saying, I should have gone with it. I should haveknown. Well, how could you have known? And it was a struggle. Iunderstand. It was a struggle for her to accept that something likethat could happen. And actually, that gets to the third step. Imentioned three steps. The first step is forgive yourself. Secondstep is forgive whoever hurt you. The third step, I give what Iclaim is sort of a funny name for it. I say, forgive God. And Isay, you can think of that even if you don't believe in God. It'snot about whether you believe in God as usually described or not.It's about forgiving. The fact that we live in a world where thatsort of thing can happen, where you can get hurt so badly and notknow it beforehand, not know how to stop. And that's really whatfaith is about.
[25:07] Karin: Yeah. And thatreminds me when I've, especially when I lost my brother a coupleyears ago, it was, you know, how. How could this. And the world'snot supposed to work that way. And so it's like this real, thisreal shift in how you see, you know, especially if. If you're notparticularly religious or don't believe in God, but you probablystill have a sense that this is how things are supposed to go.
[25:35] Bruce: Sure.
[25:36] Karin: And sorecognizing that piece of it. And. Yeah, like you said, forgivingthat this whatever it is that was somehow responsible for makingthis happen.
[25:49] Bruce: Yeah. Yeah.And that forgiveness is trickier, I think, because, again, I usethe word God because there's lots of folks that I will be readingthis and I work with who are religious again, but you can approachthis even from a non religious standpoint, that notion of forgivingGod, it's not so simple as to say, well, I guess whatever God was,God was doing the best God could under the circ*mstances. Well,wait a minute. That is the circ*mstances that can't be true. It'sreally about the way I define faith, actually. It's about acceptingthat reality, even when it's really hard and painful. There's abasic rightness underneath all of it, even though we can't quiteunderstand it all. It's a mindset that reality is essentially rightto be what it is. And that's how you get through that. It's like,well, I can't possibly understand it all. I don't have a God's eyeview of the universe. I haven't got all the data all the time andall the understanding, but I can accept that this whole business,even death itself, it's baked into the notion of life, and yetthat's really sad. It's the basic set to lose your brother. What anawful thing. Sorry to hear that happen. And too young, right? Idon't know how old your brother was, but you must have been tooyoung. It's a very sad thing. And yet death itself is part of thenature of life, and somehow we have to accept that that sort ofthing can happen, even though it's so painful when it. That mindsetis how you get through that kind of stuff.
[27:23] Karin: Why doesn'tconstant checking work to heal the relationship? So, of course, I'mthinking particularly of situations when there's been a betrayaland the person being betrayed wants to check their partner's phone,ask where they're going, have them check in all of those types ofthings. Why does that not work?
[27:48] Bruce: Yeah, this isone of those moments where, if I didn't know that Zoom, which iswhat I use for my telehealth sessions, was hippa compliant, I'dworry that you were eavesdropping on one of my sessions a couple ofdays ago. But you weren't. I know you weren't. No, because we werejust talking about that very thing. It comes up fairly frequently.Yeah. And especially in the context of infidelity. That's the onethat's kind of the classic there. It doesn't work because. A coupleof reasons. First of all, you can check your partner's iPhone allyou like, and they can still cheat. And you know that. And theyknow that. I'm not saying they want to or you want them to. I'mjust saying it doesn't actually protect you. Moreover, what it doesis says that, okay, and sometimes people seem to need this for aperiod of time, but what it establishes is that one of them is thevillain and the other is the, you know, the offended party. Well,there's an element of that that's true, but constant checkingdoesn't reassure you that they're going to be okay. All it does issets up constant hostility, because if they want to cheat, they cancheat. If they want to hide it, they can probably hide it. And howlong are you going to keep on doing that by continuing? It remindsme a little bit of not a little bit reminds me quite a bit of howpeople who work with folks who have OCD, obsessive compulsivedisorder, that compulsion to check the partner's phone is verymuch. I mean, I imagine if you put somebody in a MRI scanner, theywould see pretty much the same brain patterns as when somebody'sdealing with an OCD compulsion. And giving into it doesn't help.What do they call the gold standard? Treatment for OCD is longexposure ERp.
[29:35] Karin: Exposure.
[29:35] Bruce: Exposure withresponse prevention.
[29:36] Karin: Responseprevention, ERp.
[29:38] Bruce: And you haveto be exposed to it and get through it without giving into itenough that your brain starts to learn, oh, that thing that felt socompulsive really isn't as compulsive as I thought.
[29:51] Karin: Right. And thechecking actually can feed it and make it worse. Make you want tocheck even more. Yeah.
[29:58] Bruce: Because itmakes you feel like, oh, there's always something. And then what doyou do when you find that there's nothing? Well, that rarely makespeople feel better because they're still wondering, when's it goingto happen? Or am I missing it? Or last time they hit it. Well, arethey hiding it again? It just doesn't help. Having said that, Iwill note how amazingly understandable it is that people want to dothat, but it tends not to help in practice. A related phenomenonthat tends not to help in practice is, okay, let's establish allsorts of conduct rules. You know, you're not allowed to do anytexting after 08:00 p.m. you're not allowed to go out to the barunless I'm with you. You know, things like that, again, allunderstandable, but none of them actually help restore trust.Maybe, you know, again, maybe it gets you through while you'regetting over the shock or something gets you through a little bit.But eventually you're going to have to decide, and I'm talking tothe party who's been cheated on, they're going to have to decide,do you want to risk trusting or don't you?
[31:02] Karin: Right.
[31:03] Bruce: And that isnever an easy question.
[31:06] Karin: Right. And itreally does take a leap of faith. It's that decision to trust. Andit's so hard after you have been betrayed.
[31:17] Bruce: And you knowwhat I find interesting? What? People, just broadly speaking,people who do well, you know, sort of what distinguishes the folkswho do well. It's not that they decide that, well, okay, now I knowI can trust you because I know you're not going to betray me again.It's not that. It's that I sure hope you're not going to betray meagain. I'll be very hurt if you do. But I know now that I won't bedestroyed by. I know if that happens, okay, we'll probably splitup. It'll suck, but it's probably okay when somebody's there, thenthey have some options. Then they've got a little bit of roomagain. That's what it feels like when you're past the trauma partor another way of saying it. That's what it feels like when youforgive. And it's like, okay, well, I don't have to be furious atyou every time I think about you. Anyway, I'd like to be able totrust you. I'm willing to give it a shot. And look, you have totrust me, too. And that's another thing I point out in the book. Ifyou want to heal a relationship with someone who is betrayed, ifsomebody betrays me and I want to heal a relationship with thatperson, they're also going to have to trust me. Now, I can besaying, well, wait a minute, they're the ones who did the dirt. AndI was just reacting. True in terms of justice. But if my reactionwas angry, which it is apt to be when you're betrayed or cold orany of whatever those things were, I was essentially treating thatother person quite badly, understandably, but nevertheless badly.And they're now they've been hurt by me. And if we actually want torestore a relationship to one where we both feel good about beingin it, they're going to have to learn how to trust me as well. Andthat involves my doing some soul search. How was I part of thecontext that was. That existed when they did the betrayal. I'm notsaying I'm to blame for somebody cheating on me, but I was part ofthe context. I better look at that. And that's always a delicateone. Again, I go back to infidelity being the classic examplethere. It's always a delicate one because you don't want to givethe impression to the person who was cheated on that they somehowcaused it. Well, you weren't giving him enough sex, and so that'swhy he cheated. That's not a justification. But if the relationshipwas lacking in intimacy and they were both participating in thatand hadn't done anything about it, that's part of the context. It'snot an excuse, but it's like if you want to get back to a good orget to a good relationship where that doesn't happen, you're goingto have to deal with that.
[33:58] Karin: Some gettingto that part about the betrayed and having them talk about andaccept that they had a part to play in this in some way, that'sreally tough stuff. That's tricky. And not, like we said, notsomething to rush. And yet, if you're going to get to this newplace in the relationship, that's rewarding for both people. Thatneeds to be part of the work, too.
[34:27] Bruce: Yeah. Yeah.And it is indeed very tricky because it does. It sure seems like athin line between justifying bad behavior and on the one hand, andsaying, no, wait a minute. But you're both involved in yourrelationship and yeah, you can't do that until people are ready todo that. But when they are, that's the work of restoring trust.That's the work of saying, wow, can we make this relationshipbetter than it was? And both really want to begin. And when itworks well, I find it very inspiring because it takes an enormousamount of courage for people to look at that and not completelyfreak out.
[35:08] Karin: Yeah, yeah.And what role does compassion play in all of this?
[35:14] Bruce: Well, it'skind of key, you know, compassion, you know, I guess I tie that tothat concept of faith. You know, one of the things I tell almostevery couple I work with in the first session, and I mentioned inthe first session that I tell almost every couple of this in thefirst session, is that I can already tell we're old buddies becauseI've known you for 27 minutes. So I can already tell neither one ofyou is crazy. And I don't mean to make fun of serious mental healthissues. And look, the reason I say I tell it to almost every coupleis that over 30 years, every once in a while I have met a couplewhere I wouldn't say that because somebody is psychotic, somebodysaid some kind of serious delusion, but usually not. The folks whocome to see me typically aren't crazy, and they're not evil either.And usually they're not cognitively impaired. They're intelligentand they're decent and they mean well and they're not nuts. So thatbasic sense of validity, that's how you can. I think that attitudeitself is one of compassion. It's like, wow, you know, we all gotto be the way we are for is the sum total of lots of forces that wecan't quite all understand, but they're all valid. They're all partof the deal. It's like, yeah, it's kind of how life works and wehave to work. So I think compassion is really central. You know,that for the therapist to show that compassion is critical, Ithink. And for that to invite the couple to show that to themselvesand each other as well, that's another way of saying, yeah, that'swhat faith is, and that's how they're going to heal.
[36:56] Karin: And then alsoself compassion and the importance of the betrayer showingthemselves some self compassion as well.
[37:06] Bruce: Yeah, yeah. Ihave a chapter in the book about what if you're the one who did thebetraying? And it really does start with that concept. It's like,you know, if you're just stuck in guilt, guilt again, it'sappropriate when you've done something, you know, if I do somethingthat is against my moral values and I know it, I. Of course Ishould feel guilty. It's a sign I have consciousness. But if I getstuck there, it doesn't do the person I hurt any good. It doesn'tlet me make an actual effective apology. Not to say that apologiesare always available or even always necessary or useful, but theycan be really helpful helping both parties heal, but only ifthey're genuine and only if they're not coming from a place of, oh,my God, I'm apologizing so that. So you'll forgive me. So I don'tfeel so bad. It has to be about, wow, I'm apologizing because I'velearned this and I want to express my sorrow to you and in hopesthat that'll help you feel better to whatever extent it will, andinvite you to tell me about how it affected you so I can understandit more. That's what effective apologies tend to do. And I givesome examples in the book about classic non apology apologies.
[38:26] Karin: Right. Yeah. Ithink that's really important because if you're still beatingyourself up and you're so buried in your own shame, then it's goingto be really hard for you to reach out to your partner and reallyunderstand their pain and acknowledge that, because it would justbe too hard. But if you can show yourself some self compassion andrecognize that you are a human being and you are a flawed becauseyou are human and you are going to make mistakes, then it's goingto be much easier for you to then deal with what's really goingon.
[39:08] Bruce: Yeah. Yeah.You can actually show up rather than dissociate from yourself, youknow? Yeah. And actually be there. And then you can be responsibleand accountable and you could address it with some. And it'sinteresting when someone can get to that because there someone elseI was just working with the other day where they're in a situationwhere, yeah, they made a misjudgment, but it's a man and his wife,and the man misjudged. He didn't tell his wife about something. Heshould have told her it wasn't anything to do with infidelity orsomething like that. He should have told her some financial detail.She was shocked to hear about it. A few months later. She considersit a betrayal. And he feels terrible because indeed, had he beenasking me beforehand, should I tell my wife about this, I wouldhave said, well, of course he didnt tell her because he didnt wantto upset her, which is kind of classic, and it came back to bitehim later on. But that phenomenon of if he initially, all he wasdoing was just apologizing more or less for existing, and thatreally wasnt doing either one of them any good because when he getshold of himself, he can say, well, no, youre absolutely right. Ishould, I should have told you. I feel really bad about that. Itwas a mistake. It was a misjudgment. There was a context for thatwhich is important in our relationship. The context for him was hiswife had on many occasions, just freaked totally over very smallthings. And so that was the context. And so, again, you could say,well, that doesn't justify it, but it helps you understand it. Andif he's apologizing for everything and, you know, any insult she'sever thrown him, if he's taken to heart and apologizing for it,first of all, he's going to have his own resentments. That won'twork because he'll come to resent that, and it won't actually helpher understand what's going on either.
[41:02] Karin: Yeah. Yeah. Soif there's one thing you'd like people to walk away with afterlistening to this today, what would it be?
[41:10] Bruce: What a greatquestion. Wow. I suppose that, you know, that we're living infractious times. We're living in the world is, I guess I'm in myseventies now. Could I have said this 50 or 60 years ago? Ofcourse, the world was messed up then, too, but it just feels likethere's such polarization going on, such difficulty, peopleunderstanding each other when they, when they sense somebody's inwhatever the other tribe is. And I guess what I want people to takeaway from it is that actually it's possible to forgive someonewho's doing something that you just initially can't understand. Youknow, that's what betrayal is. It's based on a relationship.Somebody's done something you can't imagine they would have. Youcouldn't imagine they would have done. And I think that ideaextends out to understanding wherever somebody is in the politicalspectrum, understanding what somebody on the other side, how theythink without thinking them evil. To me, it feels like sacred workto do that. It's all about making the world better.
[42:21] Karin: Yeah.Beautifully said. Yeah. And I usually ask people at this point,what role does love play in the work that you do? But I alreadyasked you that in our last interview.
[42:34] Bruce: Substitute theword love. Well, in the last interview you did and what we werejust talking about, about compassion. I mean, love is everything.You know, I think you said that last time, too.
[42:44] Karin: So instead I'dask, what are some of the books that you love to recommend topeople?
[42:52] Bruce: Yeah. Yeah.I'll tell you the ones that tend to come up, because I'll say thisin sessions with folks. I'll say, oh, you know, do you know thework? One of the ones that comes up a lot is Jill Bolte TaylorBolte, spelled b o l t e. I think that's how she pronounces it. Sheis a neuroscientist who in her, I think it was in her thirties,which is pretty young for this to happen, had a massive lefthemisphere hemorrhagic stroke and lost the use of most of her lefthemisphere functions for quite a few years and healed up and, youknow, got back to being able to do things like give TED talks. Andshe gave a viral TED talk back in the, I think, what, 2008 orsomething like that called my stroke of insight. And the reasonthat I keep mentioning Jill Bolte Taylor to folks is not based onthat first book, but she wrote also a book called my stroke ofinsight. More recently, I think, three, four years ago, she wrote abook called Whole Brain Living, which I love to recommend. First ofall, it's a fun read. Her basic thesis is that based on ourneuroanatomy, we're all four different people walking around. Andshe talks about the different brain structures involved, left andright hemisphere and then sort of upper and lower respectively,like midbrain and the cortisol perspective. So you get fourdifferent characters and she gives them funny names for herself. Iforgot what she called her names. She suggests that we should allgive our own four characters funny names, too. I asked my wifeabout this when I was reading the book. She hadn't, hadn't read thebook, actually, but I asked her, hey, I've been reading aboutthese, you know, I explained a little bit about what it was aboutwhat would you call your four characters. She immediately said,john, Paul, George and Ringo. And, you know, there's something tothat. You know, that idea that we're, we're all multiple people andkind of the Beatles, you know, they put together these four verydifferent personae and they made this amazing whole, you know,we're all different people walking around. So that when somebodysays something really nasty, what Jill Bolte Taylor would point outis, oh, that's character two. That's the one that freaks out.That's the left hemisphere limbic, freaking out. And the otherparts are available, too, especially if you haven't had a stroke.The other parts are available, too. And you can learn, what shetalks about is you can learn to do a brain huddle. You can get thefour parts together and kind of, you know, let them take care ofeach other so that that one that's freaking out doesn't have tofreak out by itself. And so, you know, if she has a whole chapterin the book, as I recall, about how these four characters interactin relationships, you get two people's character, two going at it,and it's not going to go well. And so that's one of the books Ilike to recommend. Another author to recommend, and I've read acouple of his books, is Jonathan Haidt. I think that's how hepronounced it. H a I d t, who? The first book of his that I read,and this must be about 212 years ago or so, was the righteous mind.And he, if you want to understand how so many different people inthe world can think so differently about things, you'd never thinkwe could think so differently about, you know, it explainspolitical polarization or fragmentation. It explains culturaldifferences. He has a really fascinating theory called moralfoundation theory that he and some other folks have worked on. AndI find it so useful in understanding how a couple can differ andhow, you know, something that someone would do, another personwould experience as a betrayal when the other person is thinking,well, this is just normal behavior. And so I also like torecommend.
[46:35] Karin: John, thatsounds like an interesting one. I might get that. So thank you. AndI'll put those in the show notes as well. So you told us aboutwhere to find your book, but I also know you have a podcast and apractice. How can people learn more about that?
[46:52] Bruce: So if mywebsite, you know, my name is Bruce Chalmer. If you go to BruceChalmer.com, you will find there's a books tab there where you canfind all about my books. Bruce Chalmer.com takes you to my practicepage. So if you have any interest in seeing me, I do all my work ontelehealth at this point. You can do that for Bruce Chalmer.com andour podcast. It's called couples therapy in seven words. And youwill find that you can find information there as a link to it frommy, my website as well. But you can get there directly by going toCT in seven, the number seven, CTn seven.com therapy, Ctnseven.com. or you can spell out the whole words, couples therapy inseven words. You know, write the whole damn thing out. And thatworks too. But I grabbed the website CTN seven a few months afterwe got into it, and that will CTN seven.com and that'll get you anyof our podcasts. And I hope people will do that because we have alot of fun as you do. We have a lot of great guests and have a lotof interesting conversation.
[48:03] Karin: Wonderful.Well, Bruce, it was really wonderful to connect with you and talkabout this topic. It's a really good one and I highly recommendpeople go out and get your book.
[48:15] Bruce: Well, thankyou very much. It's been delightful to be on again. Best wisheswith your podcast and your practice.
[48:22] Karin: Thank you.
Outro
[47:27] Karin: Thanks forjoining us today on love is us. If you like the show, I would soappreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions andwould like to follow me on social media, you can find me onInstagram, where I'm the love and connection coach. Special thanksto Tim Gorman for my music, Aly Shaw for my artwork, and RossBurdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad youjoined us today, because the best way to bring more love into yourlife and into the world is to be loved. The best way to be loved isto love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspiredtogether.
